Yes people are missing the point here. I'm in Australia and I know when I check reddit groups moderated in other countries they are full of hate - like 4chan when the mods are asleep. I've seen an unmoderated reddit even just for a few hours, the site will be destroyed if people give up their unpaid voluntary work. They need the tools because it's not their fulltime job.
This is partly what is happening. Reading in out of the loop subreddit the trigger is Victoria but the problem is different. The one I see as one of the biggest problems is. The unpaid volunteers aren't given the tools necessary to handle moderation of subreddits by reddit corporate. The tools moderators use comes from third parties and volunteers. [0] As an outsider I have understand why they are angry, trying to create safe spaces by sweeping(and inconsistent) bans of subreddits but not giving the tools to moderators to keep their subreddits clean.
Reddit just doesn't have any incentive to do this - you're talking about people who are doing free labor for them. Maybe it's got problems, but if you get rid of the power mods (and don't change the structure to add any incentives like pay), you probably just end up with a bunch of unmoderated communities that then die off.
Right - Reddit exists, and I can make up my own mind on whether I want to use it, how much I want to use it, and whether I want to volunteer as an unpaid mod.
I do not understand people who volunteer unpaid labor and then complain bitterly about it.
You're forgetting the one thing that sets Reddit apart. They get crazy people to perform moderation tasks for free. It turns out that a lot of people don't ask for a paycheck as long as you let them push their ideology on an entire subreddit.
All the moderators are unpaid 'workers'. And their quality can be abhorrent to the extreme.
Basically reddit is the perfect example of getting people to contribute content and work for free. And when people are run off, so does your content and your moderators.
The work those few do help people like you in ways you might not completely fathom. Reddit doesn't auto-regulate itself as much as we think. It's hard work but a small percentage of people who are paid nothing, and use 3rd-party tools to work best.
Voluntary moderation isn't free labor. It's paid in power, influence, or moral gratification which may work with small platforms, but will eventually cost the platform more than a salary. Reddit just seems to be figuring that out now hence the frustration.
The powers that be have deemed that they don't care what the "free labor force" wants or thinks. They care about the experience of the users, not the experience of the rulers of petty internet fiefdoms.
Reddit has indicated that it wants to pay for content moderation. So be it. Who are you to tell them how they run their company?
Maybe when we move away from "volunteers" then the "volunteers" can get real jobs that pay real money! It'll be good for them.
Subreddits are literally controlled by volunteers who get paid nothing. What is stopping them from just going out for a month? It ought to be a month of vacation time, right?
You could argue they might lose users, but who cares, Reddit suffers more from loss of users than them anyway.
> hey, guess what? reddit "profits" a LOT from unpaid work from their moderators.
That work is not forced, they all choose to "work" for free and can quit any time they want.
And that work may be unpaid in monetary terms, but many of those moderators enjoy their share of internet fame or a sense of power over "commoners" or their feeling they are doing something for a common good, that they are happy to continue working unpaid.
This common argument seems like a misunderstanding of how Reddit works. Mods aren't unpaid workers for Reddit, but rather, mods get access to a free platform to create a community on the condition that it follows the rules. That's the compensation. In contrast, one of the forums I'm active on just did a donation run to keep their servers running for another year.
The reason Reddit is so heavily moderated is because despite receiving more than $100 million in quarterly revenue, they refuse to pay full time moderators. And the only people willing to do that work for free are crazy, terminally online NEETs who want to push their political agendas.
Replacing these volunteer moderators with paid moderators is obviously not in the cards, which can only mean Reddit wants to replace these volunteer moderators with other volunteer moderators. Assuming anyone volunteers in the first place.
Given that moderation is a thankless (and, in this case, unpaid) job, do you really think that many people with good intentions are stepping forward to take on that responsibility? Or is Reddit accidentally gonna recruit a bunch of trolls who turn r/apple into a hentai and piracy forum?
How can you be a moderator on reddit, defend reddit on other sites, meanwhile they still don't have adequate native moderation tools that have been promised for months now? I genuinely don't get such allegiance. At least get paid for it or SOMETHING.
The problem here is that most Reddit moderators care very much about the bad experience, because it makes their unpaid jobs more onerous. And Reddit can't function with moderators.
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